“Charlie Hill dissects the solitary, dignified struggles of day to day
life with great tenderness – his stories are beautiful and moving, a balance of
cool observation and tenderness. A brilliant collection.” Catherine O'Flynn

“Charlie Hill writes artfully about the gaps between people, of those
caught out by love or hushed by pain, or others seeking order within chaos,
solace in the face of change.” Catherine
McNamara

The title story from the collection may be enjoyed below.

R.R.P. £6.50

ORDER a copy of Walking Backwards now using the paypal link below.

Walking Backwards (with package & posting options)

Walking backwards

The man who
walked backwards lived in a house for people who had no house to live in. The
house was called Ilfracombe House. I don’t know why.

When I moved
into Ilfracombe House, I met the man who walked backwards. He was always there,
walking backwards through the house. He walked up and down the stairs
backwards, in and out of the lounge backwards, through the kitchen backwards.
He even walked backwards along the hall.

One day, I
asked the man why he walked backwards. He said he’d read that our hearts only
beat a certain number of times before we die, and, if this were so, it made
sense that we could only take a certain number of steps too. Each time we took
a step forwards then, we were literally moving a step closer to the end of our
life. Whereas, if we walked backwards, we were moving away from it, cheating
death a step at a time.

It’s been a
while since I saw the man who walked backwards. I don’t live in Ilfracombe
House any more. I’ve moved. I live in a house called Barnstaple House. I don’t
know why. But I think about him every time I see people walking forwards,
moving step by step towards the end.

FICTION BUNDLES (UK delivery only)

Continuing or National Flash Fiction Day celebrations, a three-pamphlet fiction bundle,containing Charlie Hill's Walking Backwards, Jude Higgins' The Chemist's House and Carrie Etter's Hometown, may be purchased for just £18 (including packing & postage for the U.K. only) using the paypal link below. This offer is valid until the end of July 24 (U.K. time).

3 fiction pamphlets offer (with p&p for U.K. only)

SUBMISSIONS

The V. Press flash fiction (NOT poetry) submissions window will also be open for the next month (30 days) (until July 24). Please check out the submissions page for how to submit work, making sure to follow all the guidelines.

(N.B. We are not currently open to general poetry submissions. However, if you are a poet already in discussions with us about a specific manuscript, this month would also be a good time to submit, before we re-open to poetry submissions generally.) Thank you.

Hometown brims with emotion-charged stories, distinctive characters and situations of hidden and not-so-hidden tensions in everyday lives in the American Midwest. From characters’ differing sense of responsibility to themselves, their friends and their families, to the wide-ranging aftermath of a white man’s accidental killing of a black man in central Illinois, these flash fictions illuminate the daily struggle of being human. Hometown proves very immediate and very engaging from start to finish.

"Etter's stories climb into your head and reboot it from the inside, from the squealingly joyous to the darkly sad, some with gear changes that fling you backwards in your seat, some told in voices so strong you could lean against them, and then some fragile, as if the page held nothing but the faint impression of a delicate and long-dead insect. I can't wait for more." David Gaffney

PRE-ORDERS for our next pamphlet of short fiction - Walking Backwards by Charlie Hill - are available here, along with a sample story and more information about this forthcoming pamphlet.

SUBMISSIONS

The V. Press flash fiction (NOT poetry) submissions window will also be open for the next month (30 days) (until July 24). Please check out the submissions page for how to submit work, making sure to follow all the guidelines.

(N.B. We are not currently open to general poetry submissions. However, if you are a poet already in discussions with us about a specific manuscript, this month would also be a good time to submit, before we re-open to poetry submissions generally.) Thank you.

A sample story from this pamphlet, 'Out of bounds', can be found below, along with launch event details.

ORDER a copy of The Chemist's House now, using the paypal link below.

The Chemist's House with packing and postage

Out of bounds

That
day, my brother dared me to put pennies on the railway track. I lay on the bank
waiting for the train to steam by, close enough to hear the crunch as the
pennies flattened out. Because I didn't have my sweet money anymore, my brother
dared me to nick liquorice and sherbet lemons from the sweet shop while the
slow old lady fumbled out the back. I scooped two handfuls from the open jars
and refused to share them with him. So we had a fight and he prised open my
fingers and snatched away most of the liquorice.

At home, our parents were busy in the
pharmacy so we went into my brother’s bedroom to drop marbles on people walking
down the street. We were already in trouble after our father came out of the
shop and shouted that we could kill someone doing that. But my brother dared me
to go into the attic when everyone was asleep. The attic was out of bounds
because that’s where Mr Perkins, the previous chemist, had stored arsenic for
sheep-dip. It was still there, in cardboard
boxes. My father didn’t know what to do with it, now it was banned. My brother
said I had to stay in the attic for an hour even though he knew Mr Perkins’
ghost came roaming at night. And while I was up there I had to taste the
arsenic. If I didn't do that, he’d say I stole the sweets.

That night, I crept up the stairs while
my brother watched from the doorway of his bedroom, timing me with his new
watch. Even though I tiptoed very softly, the floorboards in the attic room
swayed and creaked like my grandfather’s dentures. The room smelled of dust and
something sweeter, like gone-off cherries. Moonlight filtered through the cobwebbed
skylight and lit up the staring eyes of the toy lamb used for window displays.
I thought I saw a shape in the corner of the room, heard a rustle and froze.
But it was only my brother coming in to watch. He pointed to the boxes of
arsenic.

“You’ve
got to tell me what it tastes like,” he whispered. “Then you can have the last
piece.” He dangled a string of liquorice in front of me. “I'll tell on you, if
you don’t.”

I poked the tip of my finger into the
white powder and licked up a few specks.

“It doesn’t
taste of anything.”

“It
won’t hurt you, then.”

When I’d gone downstairs, eaten the
liquorice and swilled out my mouth under the cold tap, I looked in the mirror
and opened wide as if I were at the doctor’s. My tongue was still black, like
the inside of an oak tree struck by lightning.

I wanted to show my brother, but when I
opened his bedroom door, he was already asleep.

Launch event

The Chemist's House will be launched on National Flash Fiction Day, Saturday, 24 June at the Flash Fiction Festival in Bath. Jude will read from her pamphlet during the Evening of Readings.

A sample poem and more details about Tell Mistakes I Love Them can be found here.

BUY a copy now using the paypal link below.

Tell Mistakes I Love Them (with P&P options)

BOLT DOWN THIS EARTH

"From the sublime to the electric. This superb debut collection permits Davies' original and distinctive wordsmithery full rein. Electric? Let's begin with the opening couplet (from 'How Can I Mourn a Man Still Living?'):

'At the edge of my ears, a single nerve
rings like a tungsten bulb'

I'll leave that there to ponder, but I could write an essay on that one image. And the delights keep coming. Davies is as adroit with language as he is with imagery...Like I said, Davies' poetry is electric – and I love it!"

"Each page an untitled poem, snatch of eavesdropping, a rapidfire confession, the reader has to guess at the identity of the speakers and whereabouts and what of which they speak. Told throughout in first person plural, narrators could be terrorists, boat crews, refugees, security guards, viewers, readers, lookers-on, scientists, gameboys, cult members, audience, patients, snipers... The scare here being the world and time we inhabit and which is seeking to destroy us. So taken with what was being said I didn't notice until I was 20 pages in how it was being said. Then I realised that each piece was following the same form – 3 stanzas of 4 lines apiece, with each stanza having an ABBA rhyme scheme. Usually I find the clunk of end-rhymes an impediment to my engagement with a poem. So my not having noticed please take as high praise. Indeed there is far more to be gained from this collection than I have allowed myself space here to tell."

Monday, 5 June 2017

V. Press is delighted to launch Tell Mistakes I Love Them by Stephen Daniels.“In poems at
once energetic, tense, and original, Stephen Daniels' first pamphlet
compellingly explores everyday experiences. By turns funny and poignant, Tell
Mistakes I Love Them is a refreshing debut.” Carrie Etter

“What Stephen
Daniels does here is to lead us with wit and wisecrack absurdities over to the
other side of the looking-glass and then leave us there staring at our scary
selves, unable to put back together the uneven pieces of our daily eruptions
and catastrophes. This is humanity caught botching it through life, but
Stephen’s choice is to float over the nausea and master the downwards flying
that is our constant falling.” Cristina
Navazo-Eguía Newton

“Stephen
Daniels’ poems deal with the difficulty of growing in an uncomfortable world.
These poems are structured to be as uncomfortable as the stories they reveal,
they are awkward and honest, show the true damage of childhood shame rising
into adulthood – they take unexpected turns: human trauma in a real twisted,
surreal reality. A striking first pamphlet!” Hilda Sheehan

“Stephen Daniels
takes the ordinary, the everyday and makes it strange and sinister – revealing
how ordinary life is, in fact, rooted in strangeness. Daniels takes us on a
journey through childhood and modern family life. But these are not happy or
sentimental poems; they don’t shy away from the more difficult aspects of
domestic life – often exploring ideas of miscommunication, regret and how
families are casually cruel to one another. Daniels is a master recreating the
implied sense of threat that often lurks behind the everyday. The language of
the poems is deceptively light and playful, which make them a joy to read: “we
stole a real imaginary lorry/that smelled of circus” (Grounded), but the real
power of these poems is in the way he uses surreal and sometimes disjointed
language in the spinning of his tales. The effect is not unlike finding
yourself in a dream where everything is slightly off kilter. This wrong-footing
made me want to revisit the poems again and again – and on each reading I
discovered something new and exciting. Daniels is definitely a poet worth
watching.” Julia Webb

Tell Mistakes I
Love Them exposes social nerves and pokes at the wounds with
poems that are very vulnerable and very poignant.

A sample poem from the collection may be enjoyed below.

R.R.P. £6.50

PRE-ORDER a copy of now, using the paypal link below. (Tell Mistakes I Love Them is officially released on June 5, 2017. Pre-orders will be sent out in the week of publication.)